The Foreign Service Journal, January 2006

ferent from most WAE work. I have been at the internship pro- gram for nine years. It is very satisfy- ing and links well with my former career and the WAE work. It also links with my own past as a professor before I joined State. Many of my former students in the internship program say it was the key link in opening doors to professional careers, especially in international affairs. Several now work for State, CIA, DIA, etc. Unfortunately, it is a field that is difficult to get into if you don’t have a Ph.D. My advice is to begin preparing for your transition out of the Foreign Service at least a year in advance. Be real- istic and take your time: start slowly and work your way into the new situation. The retirement program was use- ful and the Retirement Division is helpful most of the time. Gene Schmiel Washington, D.C. utu Life in Small-Town America When we retired in 1997, my wife Sandy and I want- ed to stay reasonably close to Washington, D.C. Our grown children are nearby. We enjoy the city and old friends in the area. At the same time, after 32 years of life abroad and in the Northern Virginia suburbs, we longed to try life in small-town America. The answer for us was Winchester, Va., a picturesque town of around 23,000 located at the head of the Shenandoah Valley about 75 miles west of Washington, D.C. The key to Winchester for us was our love of history and of community involvement. The city’s early-18th- century origins, its role as a training ground for the young George Washington and its bloody trial-by-fire during the Civil War all rekindled my undergraduate interest in American studies. As for community, we found the city just large enough to support all sorts of cultural and social activity, but small enough to need new hands and new ideas. Winchester is conservative, no doubt about that. However, its long tradition as a regional center and cross- roads help make it relatively open to newcomers. We’ve worked on downtown revitalization — Sandy helped to start a downtown farmers’ market, and I organized a nonprofit film soci- ety — as well as becoming active in the local Unitarian-Universalist church, the local historical society and social action efforts such as the city’s Coalition for Racial Unity. Service on Winchester’s Board of Architectural Review also makes me appreciate the delicate balance between historic preservation and homeowner concerns. Who says that a diplomatic career ends with retirement? In fact, small American cities are not “small” in the way they once were. There is the Internet, where I can read the New York Times every morning — not to men- tion the papers from Brazil, my last overseas post. Also, like many regional centers, Winchester has benefited from the dispersal of facilities that were once only avail- able to larger communities. The city’s new medical cen- ter is one of the largest in this tri-state region. Shenandoah University has both an excellent music con- servatory — eat your heart out, Kennedy Center! — and good adult educational opportunities. Such institutions bring a new cosmopolitan touch to life in the northern Valley: for example, we’ve kept up our Portuguese with Brazilian neighbors, enjoy excellent professional and community theater and participate in frequent foreign policy discussions at the university. So in sum, set in the rural beauty of the Valley but with Washington only 90 minutes away, Winchester has become a fine adopted home “on the other side of the mountain,” as the natives here say. Mark Lore Winchester, W.Va. utu Is There Life After Retirement? You bet there is! But each person has a different con- cept of what such a “life” should be for him or her. Many Foreign Service people decide they would like to continue some sort of involvement with world affairs, either through a job, volunteer work or travel. Others prefer a return to their roots, or perhaps just avoiding world affairs while they tend to their roses … or grand- kids. Whatever you choose, there are lots of possibilities out there — just organize yourself, with the help of the F O C U S 66 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 6 “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.” — Robert Browning